Agatha Christie. The Mysterious Affair at Styles. 1920. The Agatha Christie Collection. Create Space, 2019.

———. The Secret Adversary. 1922. The Agatha Christie Collection. Create Space, 2019.

———. The Murder on the Links. 1923. The Agatha Christie Collection. Create Space, 2019.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles was Agatha Christie’s first published novel. While I can understand why The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was voted the best mystery novel of the Twentieth Century, The Mysterious Affair at Styles is more fun.

This novel introduced the world to Hercule Poirot. Poirot has had to leave Belgium because of the World War. He has found a place to live in Styles St. Mary in England. An old friend of his, Arthur Hastings, is recovering at the nearby estate of Styles Court after injuries he received in battle. Hastings is our narrator and gets into the story right away as Mrs. Emily Inglethorp is murdered one night. Mrs. Ingelthorp is the mistress of Styles Court.

Mrs. Inglethorp inherited Styles Court when her first husband died. She lives there with John and Lawrence Cavendish, sons of her late husband from his first marriage along with Mary, John’s wife. However, the widowed matron recently married Alfred Inglethorp, a man about twenty years her junior. People suspect he is a male gold-digger. The housekeeper, Mrs. Howard, expresses her special dislike of her mistress’s new husband.

There is also the usual house staff: housekeeper, maid, gardeners. Mrs. Inglethorp led the local philanthropy and was well esteemed by most. Still, she did have a strong personality that could lead her to rub some people the wrong way. And, as is often the case in such tales with a sizeable estate, there is a will involved. In fact, one of the questions is simply which of her wills is the most current one?

After hearing of Mrs. Inglethorp’s murder, Hastings immediately gets his friend Poirot to come to Styles Court. The inspector from Scotland Yard, Inspector Japp, is happy to have Poirot as a consultant as he knows Poirot’s reputation.

Yes, there are at least half a dozen suspects, and we are kept guessing. For example, the local druggist has a record that Mr. Ingelthorp bought some strychnine recently. Yet the signature in the pharmacy’s ledger does not match his handwriting, and according to a witness, Alfred was visiting elsewhere at the time the poison was purchased.

Poirot keeps looking. Some unusual clues become important. Why, for example, did Mrs. Inglethorp start a fire in her fireplace in the middle of a summer day? Mrs. Ingelthorp ingested poison some time in the middle of the night. But how? And how did she get served the poison?

At one point John Cavendish is arrested. Poirot predicts he will be found not guilty because there is not enough evidence. They should have waited, he says. He is right. So will Cavendish be tried again? What about double jeopardy? Is there evidence that points to someone else?

The Mysterious Affair at Styles is a most entertaining story. We observe M. Poirot observing others. We get a sense of his methods and when we find out finally who’d done it, it all makes sense and makes us smile.

The Secret Adversary introduces us to two more of Christie’s characters who will appear in a number of her stories: Tommy and Tuppence. That is to say, Tommy Beresford and Prudence “Tuppence” Cowley. They are old friends who are both demobilized after World War I and are looking for work.

They decide to start the Young Adventurers, a detective agency, and business comes right away. The problem is that it may involve some questionable personalities.

This is very different from the Christie mysteries we have reviewed recently. Today it would be classified as a thriller. Yes, the story does involve some detective work, but it has much more action, international intrigue, and a number of lives that are in danger.

The business comes to Tommy and Tuppence almost by accident. A man overhears them talking and offers Tuppence fifty pounds to begin searching for a mysterious woman known as Jane Finn. This Jane Finn was an eighteen-year-old American passenger on the Lusitania when it sank in 1915. She was looking for adventure and was on her way to England to volunteer for their war cause. When it was clear that women and children would be going to lifeboats first, a man who identified himself as a British government official gave her a document that he said should be delivered to the American consul.

The contents of the document, we are told, could affect the outcome of the war. Now that the war is over, some people think that the document could cause a socialist or Communist revolution in England if its contents are revealed. But Jane Finn landed in Ireland and seems to have completely disappeared.

Meanwhile, an American named Hofheimmer shows up looking for Miss Finn. He says that he is her cousin and he is the son of a millionaire. Even in 1922 not a whole lot of people rented Rolls-Royces, but Julius Hofheimmer does.

During the war, Tommy met a man known to him as Mr. Carter who worked for British Intelligence. Tommy looks him up to get some direction. We learn some of the details of what is going on concerning both the treaty and some foreign agents who are trying to foment a revolution.

Through Carter, they are introduced to Sir James Peel Egerton, a Member of Parliament and famous lawyer. Some say he could be Prime Minister one day. Partly through him, we become acquainted with one Marguerite “Rita” Vandemeyer who also seems to be looking for Miss Finn. Miss Vandemeyer is a still attractive woman of a certain age who has money and is used to getting what she wants.

With echoes of the Baker Street Irregulars, Albert—a pre-teen boy who works as an elevator operator and knows the streets—provides information for the Young Adventurers and acts as a messenger for them.

There are kidnappings, escapes, and at least one death in this novel. The death appears to be suicide, but who knows for sure? The escapades take the Y.A.’s and Mr. Hoffheimmer all over London and other places in southern England.

There is a deadline. Tommy learns that the conspirators are planning to make their move on September 29th, British Labour Day. That just gives them a couple of weeks. We also learn that Jane Finn, if alive, may have suffered amnesia as a result of the shock of the sinking of the ocean liner she was on. And it seems that behind everything is an éminence grise known only as Mr. Brown.

Tommy may have seen him, and everyone seems to fear him, or at the very least have great respect for him. Even though Mr. Carter knows of his existence and something of his schemes and connections, he has no idea who this Mr. Brown is.

Lots of action, lots of intrigue, and even a bit of romance in The Secret Adversary. To say more might be giving away secrets.

The Murder on the Links became the second novel of Christie’s featuring Poirot. Once again, Poirot entertains the readers, stringing us along the way he strings along his pal Hastings.

This one involves a fairly complicated murder plot. Poirot in England (the war is over but he has remained there) receives a frantic letter from a man in Normandy, France, asking for help. It sounds like he fears his life is in danger. Taking our narrator Hastings with him, Poirot hurries to the small town where M. Renauld, the letter writer, lives. When they arrive, they learn that Renauld was murdered the night before.

In what had already become a stock plot element, the local police inspector Giraud is annoyed at Poirot’s presence and a rivalry begins. Giraud is all about finding physical evidence. Poirot is more concerned about human behavior and motivation. Without going into too much detail, let us say that the physical evidence is not all that it first appears to be.

M. Renauld is a wealthy French Canadian who made his fortune in South America and retired to the coast of northern France. His body is found on a golf course adjacent to where he lives in a freshly dug but still open grave or pit. Mme. Renauld says that two masked men who spoke the Spanish dialect of South America entered their house around 2 a.m., gagged and bound her, and took her husband away. They said they wanted some secrets from him.

Poirot tells Hastings that this crime reminds him of other crimes. As he puts it, if a criminal finds that a certain modus operandi is effective, he will use the same technique again.

At the same time this home invasion occurred, the two other men who live on the property were absent. The Renauld’s chauffeur was away on vacation, and their son was supposedly on his way to Chile to take care of his father’s business there. The only other people at the house, then, the night of the murder were two maids and a housekeeper, all women. Yet it is clear that someone with a certain amount of strength must have dragged Renauld’s body to the links and dug the hole. At the same time, the body was not buried, suggesting either the murderer/murderers were interrupted or they wanted to body to be found. But then why dig the hole?

M. Renauld was stabbed to death. The knife was still in his body. The knife belonged to Jack Renauld, the Renaulds’ only son. It turns out that he had not boarded the ship to South America but had returned on the last train around midnight. He apparently did not go the Renaulds’ house because no one there saw him.

We learn that Jack had become engaged to Marthe Daubreuil, the beautiful daughter of a widow in the same town. Earlier, before he supposedly left to begin his voyage, Jack and his father had a vehement argument over Mlle. Marthe. His father opposed the marriage and even threatened to disinherit Jack if he went through with it.

Giraud arrests Jack for the murder. As in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Poirot correctly predicts there is not enough evidence to convict Jack. There are numerous twists in the plot. To say much more would involve spoilers, except to say that there is a connection to the old crime that Poirot vaguely recalled. The M.O. worked the last time. The perpetrator not only got away with murder, but got away, period.

Just when things seem to being resolved—even though it is only halfway through the book—the Renaulds’ gardener discovers a second murder victim. The unidentified man looks somewhat disheveled but is wearing an expensive suit. And he has been stabbed with the same knife that killed M. Renauld. (The knife had disappeared while in police custody due to a mistake Hastings made.)

The Murder on the Links is a puzzle, but Poirot puts the pieces together. In talking about crime in general, he notes that there are really only three motives for murder: money, relationships, or fanaticism (mental illness, political, religious). In the two murder mysteries, we can rule out the fanaticism. Political fanaticism may play into The Secret Adversary.

One common narrative trait in each of the mysteries is how susceptible men appear to be to attractive women. Hastings himself, a bachelor and war veteran, claims to have fallen in love with two different young ladies in The Murder on the Links. Before he learns about Marthe’s engagement, he is already attracted to her. He also meets a charming young Englishwoman on the train at the beginning of the story. This young lady also mysteriously appears in the village near the Renaulds. He claims he loves her as well.

Lest Christie be criticized for claiming that only men are so shallow, each of the stories also have at least one female character who is interested in men or who has married a man only because they are rich. To the romantic reader, I can say without giving too much away that the truly mercenary types of both sexes get what is coming while those of better character either realize their poor judgment or discover something more in the relationship. Indeed, The Murder on the Links really illustrates what true love may cause people to do.

There is a lot more than meets the eye in all three of these tales. They truly are entertaining reads even a century later.